“I’ll Be Your Mirror”: A Group Show at Zepster Gallery Looks Inward
From left: Kevin Mosca, Out to Get Milk (2023), oil on canvas, 45.75 x 34.25”; Kendalle Getty, Portrait of a Narcissist (2021), found mirror, custom decal, 20 x 16.5”; Kevin Mosca, Deliveryyy! (2023), oil on canvas, 45.75 x 34.25”. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of the artists and Zepster Gallery.
“See right through you like you’re bathing in Windex,” croons Mariah Carey in the titular cut “Obsessed,” which inspired the name of the current show at Zepster Gallery in East Williamsburg. Emphasizing the damage that invisibility, or the perception thereof, afflicts on the ego, the group exhibition OBSESSED, curated by Shelby Nelson Ward, features the work of Stephen Deffet, Jen DeLuna, Claire Elise, Lanyi Gao, Kendalle Getty, Grace Horan, Paul-Sebastian Japaz, Inés Maestre, Rodrigo Moreira, Kevin Mosca, Thomas Tomczak, and Youyi Echo Yan.
Exploring the construction of selfhood as a complex alchemy of internal and external perception, OBSESSED delves into the quandary of authenticity within the contemporary digital deluge of likes, followers, DMs, and branded content, playing out on millions of fragile 3 x 6” screens daily. Considering the archive of references in hand at all moments, the task of “searching” proves fairly facile to the point of contradicting and altering the very definition of that verb. The “feed,” by name and design, operates as a 24/7 algorithmic cycle of consumption, digestion, and regurgitation of filtered expression, eliciting addictive crises of the self and, worse yet, of its relevance when juxtaposed with other avatars of identity and opportunity. The artists in this show unpack that fixation, slow and arrest the gaze, and remind viewers of the reflective pleasures and insight found in experiencing tactile works in person, activating intimate encounters grounded in a—dare I say—traditional application of the aesthetic experience, a throwback if you will.
Installed at the center of the gallery’s back wall, Kendalle Getty’s Portrait of a Narcissist (2021)—a mirror with a thick, ornate gold frame and bright cursive red vinyl pasted on its reflective surface resembling lipstick graffiti—reads: “Why are you so obsessed with me?” Echoing both the title of the show and the chorus line of Carey’s song, the question coexists in the composition with the viewer’s reflection. The phrase written on the mirror simultaneously implicates both the viewer and artist as engaging in narcissism, acknowledging the shared, socially reliant experience of self-awareness.
Left: Stephen Deffet, TBC (2024), oil on linen, 39 x 31.75”; right: Rodrigo Moreira, DESIIIGN/DESIIIRE (IX) and DESIIIGN/DESIIIRE (XI) (2024), collage and silkscreen on paper, 11 x 8” framed. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of the artists and Zepster Gallery.
Throughout the exhibition, artists consistently collapse timelines of pop culture, drawing inspiration across decades and eras of production, in order to present a pastiche of influences—horror and commercial, “high” and “low,” cartoon and baroque. For example, Rodrigo Moreira’s cheeky collage and silkscreen works incorporate black-and-white 1960s photo spreads from Physique Pictorial issues. They feature young men posing in white briefs, including a pair of sailors sitting together with their sailor uniform tops and hats still on. Content from the quarterly beefcake publication is reconstructed by incorporating close-ups of analog pixels. These tiny dot patterns emphasize the production of the printed images and, in turn, reveal the production and design of desire—a main drive of the psychoanalytic ego self known as the pleasure principle, or, more plainly, basic wants and needs. They are hung alongside Stephen Deffet’s painting of a religious statue found in an anonymous, salvaged home movie footage. Interpreting the grainy, blurry VHS source imagery, Deffet’s expressive brushstrokes are evocative of El Greco’s proto-modern brushwork, animating the statue figure. Paired with his painting of a sumptuous table scene on the opposite wall, Deffet engages with the connection between material culture and our sense of self. Coexisting in proximity to one another, Deffet’s and Moreira’s works grapple with notions of reverence and perhaps playfulness.
On the opposite wall, Paul-Sebastian Japaz’s quiet vignette paintings titled Not him… it (2024) and one for you (2024) depict domestic and public scenes of intimacy and longing. Japaz’s muted yet vibrantly saturated palettes are accompanied by a lovingly rendered lit cigarette in each work, conveying a rich undercurrent of emotions that punctuate his isolated, anonymous figures only partially visible under singular light sources surrounded by darkness.
Claire Elise. Left: Composite Perspective (2024), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 40”; right: Fixation Study No. 5, (c. 2018–24), hand-colored print, chalk pastel on watercolor, 11.5 x 14.5” framed. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of the artist and Zepster Gallery.
Claire Elise’s Fixation Study No. 5 (c. 2018-2024) and Composite Perspective (2024) also share isolated and fragmented images of the body. The smaller work, Fixation Study No. 5, expands on the dark undertones baked into the title of the exhibition. In this hand-colored print, a pale, distorted face appears squished against the surface of the work, with one eye visible and a finger pulling the right corner of the cheek tautly to the side. An off-kilter top row of teeth is exposed, along with a bit of tongue. The chin curves up ever so slightly before disappearing into a background of skin, suggesting that the fused, smooshed flesh belongs to more than one person or, even more aptly, more than one version of the same person.
Kevin Mosca’s paintings Out to Get Milk and Deliveryyy! (both 2023) also steer the show toward a more sinister application of the term obsessed. They star an unsettling character, The Milkman, framed by bright orange-red paint. In Deliveryyy!, The Milkman bursts through an apartment door holding a mask of a gentile cow with a flower in its mouth (a symbol of love and peace yet also death) in one hand and a mysteriously glowing jug labeled “Grade A Raw Milk” in the other. An apartment call box and a key hang just to the left of the entryway, casting the viewer of the work in the role of the occupant and placing them in direct contact with the psychotic dairy enthusiast. Through the unnerving encounter, Mosca blurs the boundary between animal and human, predator and prey.
Jen DeLuna. From left: Bite of Another (2024), oil on canvas, 24 x 24”; Only Briefly (2024), oil on canvas, 12 x 12”; Bare (2024), oil on canvas, 12 x 12”. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of the artist and Zepster Gallery.
Jen DeLuna’s dark, visceral paintings delve further into chilling territory. Bite of Another and Bare (both 2024) depict snarling dogs that blend into the dark background. Bite of Another, for instance, shows two dogs’ bright white teeth and red, wet mouths intertwined. In between these two works, DeLuna’s Only Briefly (2024) contains the face of a woman cropped into her fine features, head bowed slightly down. She looks across the canvas intently, while her wet, red lips suggest the same hue of the dogs’ mouths beside her, imbuing the title of the work with a fierce, foreboding tone.
Installation view of OBSESSED at Zepster Gallery. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of Zepster Gallery.
In the left corner of the gallery, Grace Horan’s free-standing sculpture reiterates the subtheme of light and dark within the show. Titled MyLoveILove (2024) and outfitted as a floor lamp, it consists of hundreds of pastel stickers with Y2K girl power slogans and phrases such as “Hey there beautiful!” and “That’s Miss Princess to You!”; Horan has delicately soldered the ephemera together by hand with metal foil. The end result, illuminated with warm light, serves as an altar for self-love revival that unapologetically embraces ornamentation and retro girl power decoration as a sincere tool in self-fashioning.
Similarly, Lanyi Gao’s Orbiting on My Own Terms (2023) incorporates Sanrio’s My Melody character. Created in 1975 and revived in the 2005 anime series Onegai, My Melody (translating to Please, My Melody), My Melody’s hallmark trait is her politeness. Gao presents her as carrying a small, pink box wrapped with an adorable dark bow with the phrase “Orbiting on my own terms” rendered across it, imbuing the beloved icon with a sense of decisive, assertive direction. Meanwhile, in her painting Julia (2024), Inés Maestre celebrates the not-so-delicate queen of “fake it till you make it,” Julia Fox. Maestre presents Fox confidently staring out from atop a staircase against a tiled graffitied wall reminiscent of NYC’s classic spray-painted backdrop. The painting’s surface is dizzying, with words like “Loca,” “Art,” and “Bite Me,” as well as kitsch iconographies such as bleeding hearts, barbwire, and roses popular in past tattoo trends. Alongside Fox, a small fox descends the staircase, while a gothic angel figure floats behind her.
From left: Paul-Sebastian Japaz, one for you (2024), oil on canvas, 9 x 32”; Inés Maestre, Julia (2024), oil and mixed media on canvas, 43.25 x 29.5”; Lanyi Gao, Orbiting on my own terms (2023), oil and acrylic on canvas, 24 x 36”. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of the artists and Zepster Gallery.
In great contrast to Maestre’s self-possessed Julia, Thomas Tomczak’s paintings Cassie (2022) and buffy (almost persephone) (2024) depict iconic TV starlets in on-screen moments of vulnerability. The artist sources his images from the season finales of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Euphoria—both shows center biting dialogue and tumultuous storylines surrounding the daily lives of girls in high school. Presented side by side, the works depict the heroine and anti-heroine in states of distress, yet they are disastrously glamorous and provocative. The reference to Persephone—the mythological Queen of the Underworld who was abducted as a girl by Hades—forms a parallel with Buffy’s story. By connecting these two narratives, Tomczak underscores the enduring influence of myth and cultural archetype in the binary lens, in which femme teens are framed as good versus evil, virgin versus whore; he addresses the consequences of this lens: the actual reality of trauma experienced during late girlhood.
Installation view of Youyi Echo Yan, Prime Cut Cattle (2023), paper clay, metal, flocking fiber, silicone, jewelry display cabinet, 49 x 18 x 15”. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of the artist and Zepster Gallery.
Youyi Echo Yan’s Prime Cut Cattle (2023), a four-foot-tall vanity chest complete with a mirror on its front, sits at the center of the gallery propped open, revealing wooden shelves painted bright red that dissect the interior of the large case into sections. Mounds and tendrils of a mysterious black substance ooze over these shelves with accessory hooks sticking out. Yan’s cabinet of curiosity opens up allusions to the shadow self—unconscious parts of our personality repressed as a result of the ego’s assessment of them as less than ideal. In his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconsciousness, Carl Jung describes the shadow self as:
“[A] tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad.”
Installation view of OBSESSED at Zepster Gallery. Photo by Tyler Ward. Courtesy of Zepster Gallery.
In this context, Jung describes an abyss that upends the notion of the self altogether; one is subjected to a journey—paradoxically painful and optimistic at once—in which we can only be saved by our own understanding of selfhood. However, the deep well that he describes does also sound a lot like social media. That said, what better place to embrace obsession and these conundrums of self and authenticity than a cute, sexy, and a little bit scary up-and-coming gallery hidden in the streets of East Williamsburg?
OBSESSED is on view at Zepster Gallery from October 25 to November 17th, 2024.